We Analyzed 53,000 Thrillers — The Genre Is Quietly Getting Better
Everyone says movies are getting worse. The data disagrees — at least for thrillers. We dug into 53,000 thriller movies in the spameri.cz database and found a surprising trend: after a decade-long dip, thriller ratings have been climbing since 2019.
There's a narrative that won't die: movies peaked somewhere around 2008 and it's been downhill ever since. Sequels, reboots, franchise fatigue — you've heard it all.
But what if the numbers tell a different story?
I pulled every thriller movie from the spameri.cz database — all 53,000 of them — filtered down to the 3,893 with at least 100 Trakt ratings, and ran the numbers decade by decade. Here's what came out.
The Decade-by-Decade Breakdown
Let's start with the big picture:
| Decade | Avg Rating | Titles (100+ votes) | |--------|-----------|--------------------| | 2000s | 6.14 | 954 | | 2010s | 6.09 | 1,842 | | 2020s | 6.28 | 1,048 |
The 2010s were the low point. Average thriller ratings dipped to 6.09. But the 2020s? They bounced back to 6.28 — the highest average this century.
That's not a rounding error. That's a genuine trend reversal.
Year by Year: The Real Story
Zoom in and the picture gets clearer:
- 2008: 5.99 — the bottom falls out
- 2012: 5.98 — still scraping the floor
- 2016: 5.99 — three years of sub-6.0 in a single decade
- 2019: 6.25 — the turnaround begins
- 2023: 6.38 — highest since the early 2000s
- 2024-2025: 6.35-6.37 — holding steady
The low point was 2012. The recovery started around 2017 and hit its stride by 2019. Whatever happened in the thriller space during those years, it worked.
My theory? The streaming wars forced studios to compete on quality, not just IP recognition. When you're fighting for subscribers, you can't coast on brand alone.
How Thrillers Stack Up Against Other Genres
Here's where it gets interesting. I ran the same analysis across all major genres for movies with 500+ votes since 2000:
| Genre | Avg Rating | Titles | |-------|-----------|--------| | Animation | 7.07 | 535 | | Drama | 6.86 | 2,341 | | Romance | 6.68 | 870 | | Action | 6.53 | 1,403 | | Sci-Fi | 6.50 | 708 | | Comedy | 6.48 | 1,896 | | Thriller | 6.42 | 1,564 | | Horror | 6.16 | 828 |
Thrillers sit near the bottom — only horror rates lower. But that's deceptive. Thriller is one of the most oversaturated genres in cinema. There are more thrillers than any genre except drama and comedy. That dilution drags the average down.
The top end of thriller cinema? It's as good as anything out there.
The All-Time Thriller Champions
The most-watched thrillers on Trakt tell their own story:
- John Wick (2014) — 7.95, 61,642 votes
- Joker (2019) — 8.08, 58,688 votes
- The Batman (2022) — 7.68, 35,463 votes
- The Dark Knight (2008) — 8.53, 35,124 votes
- It (2017) — 7.43, 35,036 votes
Four of the five most-watched thrillers of all time were released after 2014. The genre isn't dying — it's more popular than ever.
The Best of Each Era
Peak thrillers by decade (5,000+ votes):
2000s: - The Dark Knight (2008) — 8.53 - Oldboy (2003) — 8.32 - Inglourious Basterds (2009) — 8.22
2010s: - Parasite (2019) — 8.49 - Whiplash (2014) — 8.46 - Shutter Island (2010) — 8.20
2020s (so far): - Nobody (2021) — 7.88 - John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) — 7.71 - The Batman (2022) — 7.68
Notice something? The 2020s top titles are rated lower than the 2010s peaks, but the average is higher. The ceiling dropped slightly, but the floor rose significantly. More thrillers are good now. Fewer are outright bad.
What Thrillers Actually Are (According to the Data)
Thrillers rarely exist in isolation. Here's what they pair with most often:
| Combo | Count | |-------|-------| | Thriller + Drama | 1,516 | | Thriller + Action | 1,285 | | Thriller + Horror | 1,204 | | Thriller + Crime | 1,140 | | Thriller + Mystery | 780 | | Thriller + Sci-Fi | 455 |
Drama and action dominate. But the thriller-horror crossover is massive — over 1,200 films. That overlap is a big reason thriller averages look lower than drama: horror tends to pull ratings down.
The thriller-mystery combo, meanwhile, tends to punch above its weight. Films like Prisoners, Shutter Island, and Parasite all carry the mystery tag — and they're among the highest-rated thrillers of the past 15 years.
The Bottom Line
53,000 thrillers. 3,893 with enough votes to matter. And the trend is clear:
Thrillers hit their low point around 2012, started recovering in 2017, and are now better on average than at any point this century.
The production volume exploded — the 2020s already have more thrillers than the entire 2000s decade — but quality didn't collapse. If anything, the flood of content forced a Darwinian selection: the bad stuff gets ignored, the good stuff rises.
So the next time someone tells you movies are getting worse, show them the data. At least for thrillers, the numbers say otherwise.